Pausing Some of the Things We Love

The Era of Peter Rabbit Dinners

Every morning, I wake before the sun rises to sit on a little hand-me-down chaise in front of my living room windows. The windows are single-paned casement, original to this 1959 ranch house. I unfold one of the metal bars and heave the window open, so that I might hear the birdsong better and take a few breaths of the air that smells like the night it is currently shrugging off.

I want to replace these windows, as charming as they might appear, because they are terrible at insulating and keeping the sounds of our suburban neighborhood out. But we need to install a range hood in the kitchen first, and replace a broken door to the side yard, and I don’t think we can get through another winter without digging a French drain out back in the garden, so window replacement gets pushed further down the list. They still work after all, even if they don’t do the job quite up to modern standards.

Though I cannot remember when the phrase slow and simple living first entered my personal lexicon, some of the main tenets of the philosophy have been streaming through my mind since I was a girl. What child can read Heidi or Anne of Green Gables and not long for a simpler, freer time? Even as my fellow Xennials and I gobbled up the early internet technology of the 90s, we still climbed trees and made forts and disappeared into the creek that ran through the park in order to catch water skeeters. We loved the freedom of slow hours outside, even as we reveled in chatrooms and illegal music downloads. None of us, children or adults, could fathom what would happen when the technology advanced so quickly and planted a mobile device in all of our hands.

In my blurry twenties, I embraced the things the media had told me would make me happy: a closet full of colorful high heels, in the style of Carrie Bradshaw; shiny phones of increasing expense; eating at innovative new restaurants in San Francisco’s early 2000s dining scene. There was a strained glamour, and a conspicuous consumption and collection of the things that would make me look chic and further my place in the world.

But this was also the era I discovered cooking, canning, and leaning into recipes that hailed from the old world and took hours of long slow cooking to prepare. I learned about sourdough, fermentation, gardening, and got curious about knitting. I started my first blog, and wrote about savoring the slower moments in our lives.

At some point in the whirlwind days of my early thirties, when I was balancing new marriage, a new baby, and a new freelance public relations and copywriting career, I realized I could not hold all of the things I wanted to hold anymore. Forget about stilettos— where on earth would I wear them? The hot new farm-to-table restaurants that I couldn’t actually afford? Instead of consuming the hallmarks of a culture I wan’t even sure I wanted to be a part of anymore, I wanted to prioritize fruit that wasn't coated with pesticides for my baby to eat. I wanted to make our small rented Oakland Craftsman feel welcoming and safe, an oasis to escape the thrum of a city in transition outside. Some of the things I truly loved, like going to see indie music shows, fell by the wayside— a victim of other things I loved and needed more.

I just finished reading Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks, and in it he reminded me of one of my favorite Elizabeth Gilbert quotes. In a Facebook post from 2015, she tells a story she shares with people who struggle to practice their creativity because they don’t have the time or energy for it:

Long ago, when I was struggling to become a writer, a wise older woman once said to me, "What are you willing to give up, in order to have the life you keep saying you want?"

I said, "You're right — I really need to start learning how to say no to things I don't want to do."

She corrected me: "No, it's much harder than that. You need to learn how start saying no to things you DO want to do, with the recognition that you have only one life, and you don't have time and energy for everything."

-Elizabeth Gilbert

No matter how many times I read that quote, it always feels like a gut punch. Because there is so much out there that I love and want to learn to do! I desperately want to improve my knitting technique, and allow myself to graduate from blankets and scarves to cabled sweaters and lacy shawls. At present, I do not have the hours in my day for this kind of focused practice. What can I cut? Reading the New York Times? I was quite intrigued by the article about the dire shortage of school bus drivers. Should I spend the valuable capital of my few remaining uninterrupted morning minutes reading about the intricacies of the situation? Or might the moments be better spent in meditation, or working on this newsletter?

And what about the meals I make, the ones featuring roast chickens and creamy-smooth mashed potatoes? Or a many-layered lasagna, with thinly sliced summer vegetables shingled together to make a raft atop a layer of béchamel? I love spending time on these elaborate meals, but if I admit the truth to myself, wouldn’t my family would be equally pleased with bread, milk, and blackberries? After all, it worked for Peter Rabbit’s mother.

In fact, Peter Rabbit Dinner is one of my family’s most crowd pleasing meals. I add in crunchy carrot crudité and a large salad, along with a crusty loaf of bread and whatever fruit is in season. The children get cups of milk (which they are delighted by, as their dinnertime beverage is usually just water) and the adults get non-alcoholic wine. I put out a wedge of cheese if we have a nice one handy, and maybe a bit of soup if there is any leftover in the fridge. In late summer, I send the kids out to the garden to pick tomatoes and those will go on the table too. It’s the simplest supper and I am not sure why we don’t just eat like this every day.

Is it because a part of me still (subconsciously) clings to this idea that a good mother spends a large percentage of her time cooking balanced meals for her family from scratch every night? I envision our ancestors, kneading dough on worn wooden tables, stirring large vats of things over a fire in the hearth. I can sometimes romanticize the simplicity of those times, forgetting the long hours of work with little amusement or poverty that forced so many to do without the tiny luxuries that make modern life softer and sweeter. But our ancestors also lived in community, and the mother wasn’t usually just toiling away by herself in her little cottage. She had sisters and neighbors and daughters and countless others around her who helped her in her daily tasks. She didn’t bear the load that we bear today, and she almost certainly didn’t do it entirely alone, as we frequently do.

And save a small circle of mother friends, I am alone. My logical brain knows that I can’t make lasagnas and roasts by myself every night, and somehow I need to remember this on Thursday afternoon. My elaborate meals can still happen, they just need to be more occasional, and undertaken in the spirit of self-nurturing— not in the spirit of service.

Much of the thinking I am doing these days is along these lines. What can we pull from our ancestors, and what doesn’t work anymore? How can we embrace the spirit of their lives and also make room for equity and justice and fairness? How can we remember their values of sustainability, and translate them into a world where everything has become disposable? And how did the immense needs of their daily lives sharpen their focus when they did have the time to focus on their passions?

Perhaps it isn’t giving up things that I love, but rather turning my attention to the things that are most aligned. I am grateful that I have time in any amount to devote to my most beloved pursuits— writing, reading, and gardening. On my supplementary list lives knitting, sewing, watercolors, piano, and yes, cooking exquisite new dishes. I don’t have to abandon them entirely! But my children, my home, my work, and my primary passions come first. There is a simple peace to that.

Back at the window, the sun is painting the clouds a golden peachy hue. It will soon crest over the hills to the East. My children’s feet hit the floor by their beds, and my time with my computer screen has drawn to a close. I pull the ancient window shut, and head to the kitchen to put the kettle back on.